the andromeda galaxy

[moonshinegnomie]

i think this might be my best andromeda shot. 9 hours of exposure time in my yard.

[SheltieLover]

1. Breathtaking!

Ty for sharing!

[biophile]

2. Magnificent!

[3catwoman3]

3. Spectacular!

I would hang a print of that in my house - it's beautiful.

[moonshinegnomie]

4. i plan on it

i have an older shot i printed a couple years ago but this one is going to replace it

[NCDem47]

5. Amazing! To get a feel for scale and scope of the universe....

It would take 2.5 MILLION years at the speed of light to reach Andromeda. And it's the Milky Way's closest galaxy neighbor!

And what we're seeing of Andromeda in full view would take 260,000 years at the speed of light to travel from one end to the other. It is estimated that there are one TRILLION stars in Andromeda. This photo is capturing all of that.

[moonshinegnomie]

6. its not the closest neighbor

there are several small galaxies closer
the magellenic clouds are on the order of 200k light years away
there is alo a very small galaxy called the sagittarius dwarf galaxy that is only 70k light years away, that was only discovered in 1994. there may be a small galaxy even closer,only 25k light years away that was discovered in 2003 but its not confiremed to be an actual galaxy

[NCDem47]

7. I learn something new every day!

You are correct. Andromeda is the closest barred spiral galaxy to the Milky Way.

[erronis]

15. Oh, quibbling about such small numbers.....

/humor

[airplaneman]

24. And the number of galaxies in the visible universe

Not counting Andromeda two to three additional trillion galaxies in the visible universe. The total being as many as three trillion and one galaxies. Mind boggling isn’t it?
-Airplane

[Deuxcents]

8. Your photos and explanations are spectacular! You could be our version of Carl Sagan 🪐

I say that with all due respect..like the other poster, I learn something new here everyday. Thank you

[HAB911]

9. Amazing!

[brer cat]

10. Your night sky shots are amazing. Thank you very much for sharing.

[GiqueCee]

11. When you're shooting...

... for nine hours, how do you calibrate the movement of your camera to coincide with earth's movement in relation to the subject, in this case, the Andromeda Galaxy? Your photos are magnificent!

[moonshinegnomie]

13. i use a tracking mount

i align it with the north galactic pole (think of a line thru the eart from the south pole to the north pole and extending to infinity)
then the mount rotates at the same rate as the earth so the object stars in the same place

[GiqueCee]

21. Thank you...

... I like to learn something new every day. Though, being year and change shy of eighty, I thought I'd be a lot smarter by now.

[BComplex]

22. LOL! You're in good company, GiqueCee!

[Celerity]

12. Superb.

[SpankMe]

14. This is killer

You must live in a dark-sky area.

[moonshinegnomie]

23. nope,heavy light pollution

on the bortle scale of light polluion in in an 8 out of 9 (just outside austin texas in the first suburb north)

[Quanto Magnus]

16. Amazing!!

That's an incredible picture. Well done!

[calimary]

17. What a gorgeous photo!

[irisblue]

18. Wowsa!

[angrychair]

19. Absolutely beautifully done

Very nice. The one thing I hate about images of space is that they are often incredibly beautiful and stunning images but are incredibly poor ways to convey the magnitude of what is being observed.
For example, in this image is an entirely different galaxy than our own. The Andromeda Galaxy is more than twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy at over 200,000 light years across and is believed to contain over a trillion planets.
I mean let's be honest, our mind can't even grasp the size of our own galaxy, much less another one. It's just so mind bogglingly huge in scale that you can't help but be humbled and realize that our little problems here are completely insignificant to the universe. If we destroy ourselves over the next couple of years the universe won't even have had time to notice we existed at all.
It's up to us to survive and prove to the universe that we existed and we mattered. We are likely hundreds of years and dozens of generations from doing that but for now let's just try to get through the day 😊

[FemDemERA]

20. Stunning! I am completely in awe, not just

At the beauty of what is out there, but in your ability to capture it. Thank you so much for sharing.

[ShazzieB]

25. I am at a loss for words!

All of the words I can think of to even attempt to describe this have already been used. It's absolutely out of this world -- pun intentended!

[-misanthroptimist]

26. Outstanding!

Beautifully composed, too, with the second galaxy (M33?).